Whitman to Decide on HP PC Unit Spin Off by End October

October 0500:002011

New York, October 5 (RainbowNewsLine.com) – Meg Whitman, the new CEO of Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) announced that she will decide the future of HP’s PC unit by the end of October. An indication of this intention had been given by former CEO Apotheker in August. On Tuesday, Whitman said that she would not like to waste any time in deciding about the future of the division “because uncertainty is not our friend here.” She told an audience at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday that “That’s a decision I’d like to make … certainly by the end of October,”

Whitman had taken over the reins of HP from Apotheker in August and is now facing an uphill task of restoring confidence in the Silicon Valley Company. She told Reuters after her above remarks that the October timeline might “slip a bit” but the process has been “certainly much more accelerated” than it had been under Apotheker. She exuded confidence when she said that she was “open-minded” regarding the direction that she would be taking with the PC business.

Whitman had taken over from Apotheker after a series of jarring strategy shifts and three quarters of reduced sales forecasts had ousted him from the job. Whitman said that it would be “very helpful” if the company met analysts’ expectations in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Oct.